ECON 1580 — Introduction to Economics
My Personal Experience and Tips for This Course.
👋 Welcome to ECON 1580
Hi! If you are interested in taking ECON 1580 “Introduction to Economics” at University of the People, this article is for you. I took this course during April-May of 2019.
Please let me start this article by telling you that taking this course is one of the best choices I have made. It was a very rewarding and challenging experience that truly helped me understand the intricacies of both Microeconomics and Macroeconomics. 👍
I know you must be asking yourself: why did I choose to take this course during my first term as a degree-seeking student at UoPeople if I’m majoring in Computer Science?
Well… one of the reasons why I chose to take this course at this particular moment is that I wanted to learn more about the causes of economic instability in countries around the world. A bad management of the macroeconomics of a country has a tremendous impact in the life of its inhabitants. It can determine if the population will be successful or if the country will sink and fall into crisis and despair. I was also curious about the potential of Microeconomics as a tool to create successful businesses.
All of these factors, combined with the fact that a Computer Science major at UoPeople can take ECON 1580 “Introduction to Economics” to meet the “Social and Behavioral Sciences” course requisite, made me choose this course immediately. 😍
Now let’s dive into the main aspects of the course:
- Topics covered,
- Study tips,
- Time management strategies (this is a particularly time-demanding course),
- Links to free resources that I found very helpful during this learning experience.
Let’s begin! ☀️
📚 Course Content
Let me start by giving you a brief overview of the topics covered during the course.
This course is a little bit different than other UoPeople courses because it covers two topics per week instead of one main topic per week. This is due to the fact that the course covers both Microeconomics and Macroeconomics, so there is a lot of content to cover in just eight weeks. Business Majors can take two separate courses, one for micro and one for macro. But in ECON 1580, you learn the main topics of these two courses at once, which makes the experience very intensive.
You have two reading assignments, one for each topic. You also have two self-quizzes, one for each topic. You can start to see how this course can quickly become very time-demanding if you are completely new to the subject (as I was 😅). Be prepared to work hard and to give your best from week 1. In my group, 32 students started the course and only 17 remained after the withdraw period. You need to be prepared to study thoroughly from the first week to avoid feeling overloaded by the amount of content that you need to absorb each week.
In particular, these are the topics covered per week (one unit per week):
- Unit 1:
Economics: The Study of Choice.
Confronting Scarcity. - Unit 2:
Demand and Supply.
Elasticity
(Key Topics! ⭐️). - Unit 3:
Analysis of Consumer Choice.
Production and Cost.
(More Challenging Topics ⚠️). - Unit 4:
Competitive Markets for Goods and Services.
Monopoly. - Unit 5:
Imperfect Competition.
Macroeconomics: The Big Picture.
(Hello, Macro! 👋) - Unit 6:
Measuring Output and Income.
Aggregate Demand and Supply. - Unit 7:
Economic Growth.
The Nature and Creation of Money. 💵 - Unit 8:
Monetary Policy and the Fed.
Government and Fiscal Policy. - Unit 9: Final Exam 📝
I must say that this course truly exceeded my expectations with its challenging quizzes and assessments. You will have three main assessments per week: a discussion forums post, a written assignment, and a learning journal. You will check your knowledge with two self-quizzes per week, and two graded quizzes (week 3 and week 6).
Grading:
This was the established grading when I took the course. You can see that the two graded quizzes are worth 40%.
Main Course Books:
- Rittenberg, L. & Tregarthen, T. (2009). Principles of Economics.
- McAfee, R. P., Lewis, T. R., & Dale, D. D. (2014). Introduction to Economic Analysis (Recommended).
These books are provided by UoPeople on the course page.
✍️ Study Tips & Time Management
Time management is particularly important for this course given the amount of content covered per week. I would recommend allocating at least 18 hours per week if you are new to these topics. Maintaining a fix study schedule is key to succeed.
These are my main study tips:
- Take Detailed Notes: I cannot emphasize this enough. UoPeople is text-based, which means that your class is your reading session. Active reading and note-taking are key to enhance your understanding of the readings. With practice, you will learn how to determine which aspects of the readings are most important. I personally like to use highlighters and I have developed a color-coding system with specific colors for new terminology, key aspects, and important tips.
- Understand, do not Memorize: understanding the content is key to be able address the assignments and the quiz questions. This course is not memory-based. You will not be asked exactly the same content that you read on the book, you will be asked to analyze and think critically about the topics to answer challenging questions. To succeed in ECON 1580, you need to understand the topics presented to think critically and apply your knowledge to different situations and scenarios. I suggest asking yourself questions about the topic, or perhaps making a questionnaire as a study tool.
- Solve the Practice Exercises from the Textbook: they are a very nice study tool. I totally recommend solving these exercises and answering these questions.
💡 Note: I seriously recommend drawing the graphs presented in the textbook. This active engagement with the content really helped me remember and understand them better.
⭐️ Special Summaries
This is a special tip that I would like to share with you. Each week I made two mind maps to summarize the topics. Also, during week 8, while I was studying for my final exam, I decided to make special summaries with the key as aspects of the topics.
I made a one-page summary with the main laws of economics such as the Law of Increasing Opportunity Cost, the Laws of Supply and Demand, and the Law of Diminishing Marginal Returns. I also made a summary of all the main graphs presented throughout the course (you can see a sample of this summary below).
These summaries really helped me during my study sessions. I hope that this technique will help you too. 👍
🎓 Helpful Resources
During the course, you are welcome to complement your learning with online resources. I particularly recommend watching (or reading) the lectures presented on Khan Academy:
I really liked how they explain the concepts and they also provide examples of practical exercises where they calculate indices and inflation.
I also like to solve short online quizzes on websites like ProProfs:
Google the topic + “ProProfs quiz” and you will find great resources to test your knowledge.
✨ Good Luck!
I really hope that you liked my article. Follow my Medium Publication My UoPeople CS Journey to read about my experience during the degree🎓.
I wish you much success during this course and during your UoPeople journey! Your claps 👏 are really appreciated.
